


we only own our hell

by KingLear



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Aaron Burr-centric, Angst, Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, Talk Less Smile More
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 15:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13298097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingLear/pseuds/KingLear
Summary: how a young aaron burr accepts his legacy





	we only own our hell

Growing up in Newark, Aaron had often been the envy of those surrounded by him. They'd hee-and-haw over his ancestry, his heritage, his money, whispering behind hands about the Burr legacy and how he was the sole heir of it.  _To hell with it._ Aaron had always thought, bitterly, sour lemon on his tongue as he stared in disdain at the greedy intentions hidden behind a caricature of kindness. Did they think he was that naive to believe their lies coated in sweet honey? 

He can barely remember his parents. Can barely remember the curl of his mother's hair as she stared down at him and sang him Christian hymns, can barely remember the way his father taught him to walk, a proudness in his eyes that Aaron's brain has erased the look of. They were candles in the wind, blown out at the whisper of a gust, blown out of his life without much of an adieu. He'd grown so used to nannies and governesses that he'd forgotten that he'd ever even had any parents to begin with. 

When he'd been seven summers old, he'd walked around his uncle's house for the first time. His governess, Ms. Abigail Williams, had given him time for leisure, a break from his studies and the Bible. She had pink apple cheeks, wind-bitten, her skin was aged as her fair, blue eyes that held kindness that Aaron was foreign to, ushered him to take a walk with her.  Aaron had hesitatingly walked around the grand house with the prickle of curiosity underneath the flesh of his bruised skin, hands brushing against the fine tapestry with the paint that hadn't been given the time to dry properly, had looked up at the family portraits of the dead. 

"Your parents were very important people," She'd said, staring admiringly at the portrait of Esther and Aaron Burr Senior. She'd turned to him and gestured a petite hand towards the couple portrait of his parents holding each other as they stared at the direction of the artist painting them. He'd said nothing as he glanced up unblinkingly at the two people who'd left him behind. They stared back at him and Aaron could close his eyes and pretend for a moment that they were apologising to him for leaving him behind, that they were promising that they'd come back for him. But the moment broke and Aaron was back in the present with his uncle who despised him, a sister who did her best to ignore him and a plethora of scars and bruises along his back from the belt that his uncles liked to use when Aaron breathed wrong. 

"I knew your mother, you know, I took care of her like I'm taking care of you." Abigail carried on, her eyes getting slightly misty as she remembered more. She chuckled fondly, sweet as the peaches from Virginia, "You were the apple of her eye and she often kept you close to her chest, refusing to let anyone carry you or even touch a hair on your head after one of your sickly bouts."

He stared at her as if she was speaking the Latin that he wasn't proficient in. 

"Your father was a workaholic, the poor man barely spent a moment away from his writings but I remember him being just like you when he'd been a kid, you're the splitting image of him, I'll tell you now," She shook her head, a curl of her grey-golden hair falling out from the bonnet that she used to tie it back, then she repeated herself, "Your parents were very important people and someday you're going to make them very proud." 

That night, he had laid in his small cot on the floor in his small room, staring up at the ceiling as he tried his best to ignore the throbbing pains of his bruises and the hunger in his stomach, pleading for him to even steal a morsel of food. His uncle had found him in one of his mother's locked studies that he wasn't allowed in earlier in the evening and had gone ballistic at the sight of Aaron curled on the floor touching the journals that his mother had written with his filthy sticky hands.

He'd called him an ungrateful abomination and a cunning freak for being able to unlock the door with a string of metal that he'd found laying about. Thievery of the worst, Timothy had scorned, lifting the journals up by their pages as he inspected the damages that Aaron's curious hands had done on the pages.

"You've already taken the lives of your mother and your father, and now you want to destroy the little memento that I have left?" He'd scowled, his eyebrows furrowing as he stood menacingly over the sitting boy. Aaron's cheek whipped to the right with the strength of the slap that Timothy had given. Raising a hand to his cheek, he could feel the stinging of his tears as much as the stinging of his bruising cheeks. Aaron had cried, shaking as he pleaded for his uncle to stop kicking him, had screamed promises that he'd do better next time, begging him for another chance. In the end, Timothy had tired of the plaintive cries that were escaping him and he'd been grabbed roughly by his arm and thrown into his room without much fanfare.

He'd heard his uncle's retreating words to the slaves to forgo making dinner for him. "Let him starve for tonight and let's see if he's learned his lessons yet in the morning." He'd said, with much disgust lacing his wine-drunk mouth, his cane tapping on the wooden floor as he left to go downstairs for the evening supper. 

Aaron wiped his tears as he tried to remember the kind words that Ms. Williams had to say about his mother and father about him, trying to choke back the heaviness in his throat as he suffocated.

Closing his eyes tightly till he saw stars behind them, Aaron tried his hardest to want what he had.

**Author's Note:**

> The past few days have been really rough on me. It always makes me feel better writing about Aaron Burr so here we go.


End file.
